The NRA doesn’t protect the public. It protects the gun rights of accused criminals.

Will Saletan writes about politics, science, technology, and other stuff for Slate. He’s the author of Bearing Right.

The National Rifle Association says it’s tough on crime. It wants to “keep guns out of the hands of people who are potential killers,” according to NRA president David Keene. Yesterday, after President Obama issued a list of gun-control proposals in response to the Sandy Hook massacre, the NRA charged that under Obama’s plan, “Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected.” The better course, said the organization, was “prosecuting violent criminals to the fullest extent of the law.”

But the NRA doesn’t help the government prosecute accused criminals. It defends them. The NRA is a civil liberties organization, like the ACLU. It focuses not on protecting the public, but on the rights of those who are arrested, accused, or prosecuted. Except that the NRA, unlike the ACLU, doesn’t concern itself with the rights of suspects in general. It focuses entirely on preserving their access to guns.

The NRA opposed the bill, claiming it would “deny law-abiding people due process and their Second Amendment rights.” As evidence, the NRA’s chief lobbyist cited a Justice Department report indicating that 6 percent of people on the list were included based on obsolete or extraneous FBI information. An editorial published by the NRA complained that the bill would lower “the standard measure of proof of guilt in criminal prosecutions” and that “whole segments of lawful firearms commerce could be wiped out.” The bill died in committee.

That same year, Maryland lawmakers introduced a bill that would give judges authority, when issuing protective orders against potential domestic violence, to “order the respondent to surrender to law enforcement authorities any firearm in the respondent's possession, and to refrain from possession of any firearm, for the duration of the temporary protective order.” Under the bill, this restriction couldn’t apply for more than a week. Nevertheless, the NRA called the legislation “unnecessary and unfair,” arguing that it would render “a victim of false allegations” unable to “defend himself at home or simply possess his own guns for any other lawful purpose.”

Now the NRA says it’s a friend of law enforcement and an enemy of thugs and crooks. “I'll tell you what would work right now,” says NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre. “Tomorrow morning—and the NRA would be there every step of the way—if President Obama would walk in and tell the attorney general of the United States to tell every U.S. attorney, ‘If you catch a drug dealer on the street with a gun, I want you to prosecute him.’ ”

Drop the act, Wayne. You’re not fighting to protect us from accused drug dealers, wife beaters, and terrorists. You’re their lawyer.